Making Intelligent Leaders Out Of Intelligent Employees

You have a gold mine of talent inside your organization at this very moment. Here is an area where you might have room for growth: promotions from within. Investing in your employees and helping them transform into strong leaders will ensure that you’re able to retain the talented individuals you hired and create a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship between employee and employer.

Knowing who to promote and when is a skill that your current executive team can hone. Read on to learn more.

The Case for Promoting from Within

Your company probably doesn’t need to form a search committee to find a high-paid, experienced executive who’s helped make major strides at other companies in the past. Somebody that doubled sales at Company X or turned around public perception at Company Y or raised stock prices at Company Z might not actually be able to do anything at all for your own company. Your great ideas could very well come from inside your firm. And you could be close to uncovering them, if you know who to invest in, train, and promote to leadership positions.

Your internal candidates for promotion have something that no one else has: knowledge of and experience with your company and how things really work here, maybe even from the ground up. Promoting from within boosts morale throughout all echelons of the company. When employees at all seniority levels see that opportunity exists and that their organization is the kind of organization that invests in and rewards ingenuity, they’ll respond by investing back in their organization with time and loyalty.

In the war for talent, this key benefit of promoting from within cannot be overlooked. According to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center, one of the top reasons that employees left their jobs this year was that they saw no opportunities for advancement and felt as if they were consistently disrespected. In fact, “no opportunities for advancement” was tied for the very first reason that employees left their jobs, scoring the same as “pay was too low.” In 2022, employees fled their posts in droves. This phenomenon has been labeled by social scientists as “the Great Resignation.” Data points to the fact that investing in our employees, training them for leadership positions, and promoting them when we see potential could prove to be the attrition cure.

Discovering Potential in Your Employees: Knowing Who to Invest in and When to Invest in Them

The unfortunate truth is that not all employees are ready to step into a leadership role. Some need more time, and more experience, or they may need to show more interest before it makes sense for your company to make a significant investment in their potential. Knowing who to invest in and when to invest in them is one of the central tenets of leading people. Executing this ability involves having a pulse on what’s going on at all levels of your company, and how each department’s dynamics are playing out.

There are a few key signs that an employee is ready to be promoted, has the potential to succeed, and can add true value to your organization in a leadership position:

• They have a mastery of your industry and/or the technical aspects of their role.
• They have the desire and willingness to help and give credit to others on their team, an early sign of leadership ability.
• They can tackle problems with a positive attitude, and don’t get flustered easily when issues present themselves.
• They’re not the type of person who wants to cut corners for the sake of it.
• They show genuine interest in the goals of their team, the goals of their department, and the goals of the company.
• It’s easy to see them succeeding in their boss’ position (or a higher-level role).

If your employee is showing most of these qualities, it’s likely that another organization would pay top dollar to take them off your hands. Promoting them, investing in their leadership training, and providing a path for advancement now will help your firm earn their loyalty now and in the long run.

How Intelligent Leadership Training and Executive Coaching Can Help

John Mattone Global, Inc. is in the business of changing the world, one leader and one coach at a time. Once you’ve identified the employees you’d like to promote from within, you can largely leave the rest to JMG. Our Intelligent Leadership Training programs have the power to transform an employee with potential into a leader with the skills to give back to his or her company tenfold. Through JMG’s executive coaching and Intelligent Leadership Training programs, leaders are encouraged and guided to find an understanding of what drives them, and others, and how they can add value to their own lives and to their companies.

At John Mattone Global, we offer a variety of ways for your employees to access leadership training. We know your high-potential employees are busy; that’s why our goal is to meet your employees where they are. Aside from our traditional in-house leadership training program, which ranges from 6-month to year-long (or longer) assignments, we also provide corporate leadership retreats, online coaching academy access, and much, much more. Allow JMG to provide the transformational leadership change that will benefit both your employees and your organization as a whole. If you’d like to find out what it takes to develop employees into leaders in your business, reach out to us to learn more.

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